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Addressing a recent rally in Frankfurt, a self-identified Israeli man equated Muslims with Nazis, murderers and rapists, and implored the crowd to “never feel ashamed” of Germany’s past.

The rally was called by Pegida, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, a far-right organization founded last October in Dresden. Its demonstrations initially attracted hundreds of people protesting what they believe is Islam’s takeover of Germany. More recently, the number of people to attend has been in the thousands.

An assortment of rightwing groups, including neo-Nazis, have been taking part. Following the attacks on the paper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris last month, a 12 January rally drew more than 25,000 people.

A video, which was posted to YouTube by Journal Frankfurt last week, shows a man, wrapped in a German flag, describing himself as an Israeli with German heritage during a Pegida rally.

“I come from Israel. Germany is yours!” he tells the crowd, to thunderous cheers.

He continues: “Germany’s not Nazis. I am Jewish. My family lived here in Germany for 700 years. And I can tell you that I see here no Nazis. The Nazis are in the left.

“Right here I see only patriots who love their country and want to save Germany from the Islam that wants to take over, to take your traditions, to take your beliefs, to take all of you down. But we will not let it.”

After naming Muslims as the true Nazis, the man goes on to forgive Germany for the Nazi-led genocide of European Jews during the Second World War.

“We will stand together and we will face the real Nazis. The Nazis are inside the Islam mentality and those who want to sell Germany for votes,” he says, adding, “Israel is with Germany. We respect you, we forgive, we love you. You are the best country in the world. Save it.”

“All the world is looking at you now and we are proud. You are the true spirit of Germany,” he snarls. “Islam wants to take you and to drink from the milk of Germany.”

As the hate sermon continues, the man implores the crowd to “Never feel ashamed of yourselves, not even because of the past.”

He then declares himself a proud Islamophobe while advancing a blood libel against Muslims, characterizing them as rapists and murderers who must be feared.

“The Muslims say that we are Islamophobes. Yes, I am Islamophobe because phobia is fear and I am afraid of murder. I am afraid to be raped,” he roars.

“So they can call you Islamophobes, they can call you Nazis and racists. But we are not. We are Germans. We are patriots. We love this country.”

“Antifa [German slang for anti-fascists], fuck you! We are stronger! We will win!”

Mosque defaced with swastikas

As smaller Pegida offshoots spread to other parts of the country, they have sometimes been met with even larger anti-racist counter-demonstrations.

Yet Pegida’s reach is growing as the group held its first demonstration in Austria, on Monday night. In the lead-up to the march, vandals defaced a Vienna mosque with swastikas. This was just the latest in a string of anti-Islam attacks across Austria. “In December unknown culprits left a pig’s head and intestines in front of the door of another mosque in the capital. A street sign was changed to read ‘Sharia Street’ in September,” the news agency AFP reported.

Not a surprise that some supporters of the right-winged Pegida movement (here in Munich) appeared w/an Israeli flag. pic.twitter.com/NLdhhODKVp

In recent years, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant incitement has become a rallying cry of the increasingly popular rightwing elements undergoing a resurgence across Europe. Although many right-wing European parties have neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic roots, they identify deeply with Israel and Zionism, which are often used as vehicles to promote hatred for Islam and multiculturalism in Europe as well as the United States.

In some cases, formerly anti-Semitic political parties have seamlessly projected the anti-Semitic rhetoric they once espoused against Jews onto Muslim communities.

Speaking to the media on the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Mattias Karlsson, leader of the far-right Swedish Democrats (SD), said, “the threat of Islamism is perhaps greater than it is from Nazism.”

Rooted in fascism and the country’s neo-Nazi movement, SD captured 13 percent of the vote in the last general election, making it the third most popular political party in Sweden.

Kent Ekerot, an SD member and Jewish parliamentarian, has helped forge his party’s close relationship with the Israeli government. Although SD leaders continue to espouse anti-Jewish attitudes, Ekerot insists that anti-Semitism in Sweden is entirely “imported” and a result of “unrestricted immigration” of Arabs and Muslims, which he and his party fervently oppose.

Emran Feroz, a journalist based in Germany, detailed the convergence of pro-Israel attitudes and right-wing European Islamophobia in an article for AlterNet last month:

Right-wing parties like the Austrian FPÖ [Freedom Party] have discovered that it is much easier for them to spread their hatred beneath pro-Israel cover. For instance, the FPÖ made it clear that “supporting the Jewish State against Islamism” has become one of their new political pillars. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, has learned the same lesson, scrapping her father’s overt anti-Semitism and opposition to Europe’s special relationship with Israel and replacing it with an aggressively neoconservative outlook. In turn, she has attracted support from right-wing French Jews and cultivated a mainstream appeal her father [Jean-Marie Le Pen] could have only dreamed of. But the seething racism that was a hallmark of her father’s politics remains firmly entrenched in the platform of her National Front.

Geert Wilders and his Party of Freedom [in the Netherlands] were among the leaders of the European far-right’s alliance with Israel’s rightist Likud. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post’s Benjamin Weinthal, an American neoconservative operative funded by right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson, Wilders declared that Israel is the “only light of democracy in the Middle East.” He then demanded that the European Union and the United States stand by Israel’s side in the clash of civilizations — a war pitting the “Judeo-Christian” West against Islam. Wilders declared that the name of the state of Palestine should be changed to “Jordan,” suggesting that Palestinians either be forcibly expelled from their homes or stripped of national identity. In 2014, Wilders agitated unsuccessfully but flamboyantly for a commemoration for former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in the Dutch parliament.

This hate is not isolated to the far-right, which only represents the most bellicose strain of an Islamophobia that is entrenched within the supposedly enlightened mainstream.

From Dresden to Austin

On 29 January, when Muslim men, women and children from across Texas gathered in Austin to meet with lawmakers and learn about the political process during the seventh annual Texas Muslim Capitol Day, they were met with anti-Islam protesters waving Texas and Israeli flags and holding signs that read, “Radical Islam is the new Nazi” and “Go home & take Obama with you.”

As Muslim schoolchildren sang the American national anthem, the demonstrators shouted in their faces, “Islam is a lie!” and “No Sharia here!”

Prior to the hate fest, Texas lawmaker Molly White took to Facebook to say that despite being away for recess she instructed her staff to subject Muslim constituents to loyalty oaths as a condition of entering her office, where she left an Israeli flag on her desk as an apparent symbol of her allegiance to America.

“I did leave an Israeli flag on the reception desk in my office with instructions to staff to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws,” White wrote on her Facebook page. “We will see how long they stay in my office.”

This followed a similar anti-Muslim demonstration in Texas last month. As The Electronic Intifada’s Patrick Strickland reported at the time, the Israeli flag was waved alongside the American flag by white Christian extremists to signify their hatred for Muslims.

Israel is not responsible for the anti-Muslim hatred sweeping the West. But its role as a symbol of and cover for hate reflects shared values and a growing alliance between support for Israel and right-wing hatred for Islam in the West.

Comments

In psychiatry that is called "projection" and by laypersons it is called absurd. All you can do is laugh at the nonsense of such a claim. We are living in a topsy turvy world when Israelis call anyone a Nazi. Palestinians can't be Nazis because they lack the power to be Nazis. Israelis are the copycats of the Third Reich.

Every word. Though there is a big difference between West-Germany ( I'm from really multicultural Cologne, used to have always the biggest anti far right and ant-islamophobe rallies).
Worth to notice that there are not only far right groups, but also far left - at least they call themselves as that. Me have doubts.
They are called Antideutsche (anti-Germans); the only difference to the far right is in my eyes that instead of that guy in video calling himself German jew from Israel (which must not be correct) they shout "Bomber Harris do it again", i.e. bomb Dresden.
They especially underminded the German pirate party and after destroying her nearly completely they are now flocking out to Die Linke (see http://electronicintifada.net/... ) because of their Bak Shalom, they also seem to go to a new party, the Neue Liberale. Possibly also in AfD, where they have some sympathy for Pegida rallies; this doesn't look strange. Their master, though not so openly confessed, notorious pro-Israel smearer Henryk M. Broder before elections last year announced that he may vote for AfD this time.

It not only sickens me to see and hear this rabid Israeli speaking to Neo-Nazis and the disenchanted, resentful, racists of Germany, but it is incomprehensible when films about the Nazi era are shown on German TV stations every day of the week since decades, that anyone can stand up and rant like the Nazi leaders - identical in word and tone - who destroyed Germany and cruelly harmed most of Europe, murdered uncountable millions of Russians, Poles, Germans and citizens of other countries, and brought the deepest shame to Germany.
It is terrifying that such people speak this way in public and that they are allowed to speak. I hope it all burns out fast.

On Sunday in Dublin Ireland, the small, pathetic far-right fascist groups "Irish patriot movement" & "democratic right movement" staged a protest outside a Mosque in Dublin. On their facebook pages, it said that over 300 people were supposed to turn out but LITERALLY only 9 idiots arrived with a banner and a few leaflets... What makes it even better is that they were confronted by 70-85 supporters of AFA Ireland(anti-fascists Action). Including communists, socialists, republicans and members of the Muslim community. http://youtu.be/d8vaL2p7rPQ

"Merkel said that the Muslims children deserve to live without fear in our country. What about the German children? And European children? We live everyday with fear of the Muslims! Women can get raped in main cities, men can be beaten, German Jewish people cannot speak Hebrew in Berlin in fear or being attacked.. Merkel, you do not care about the people of Germany, you care about the Muslims who lied that they are "refugees"! Nonsense, they are leeches that just want our money, jobs, girls, boys, to destroy our culture, our religions, our tradition and to intimidate us! Muslims must return to their Home Counties, Germany is not their home, not their blood and not trier heritage!
They came here to kill us and to take our country! Europe is NOT a trash-can to throw Muslims in! Many are terrorists that Israel had to release from prison after bad deals with Hamas. Muslims, Merkel and other false EU "leaders" that don't represent us, are the main reason we live in fear, because they only cares what other left-winged EU countries will think of us! WIR SIND DAS VOLK UND EUROPA! For our families! For now and our future!" Keep our counties as they always were: OURS!"
Dr. Rotem Avituv
2. Januar